Commentary: Reducing tests won’t necessarily reduce dropout rate

Texas on the Potomac welcomes guest commentary from across the political spectrum. Today, we feature a column by regular contributor Jason Stanford, a Democratic consultant in Austin.

Jason Stanford

The Texas legislature is poised to reduce the number of standardized tests required to graduate from high school from 15 to as few as five. This comes amid a national backlash against high-stakes testing that many parents, teachers and students argue has corrupted classroom instruction to further a false dogma. While these critics are hailing Texas’ legislation as welcome relief from over-testing, the bill would do nothing for the staggering number of students who now won’t graduate because they’ve failed both at least one state test and two retakes. In fact, the testing relief bill almost guarantees that the state’s dropout rate will skyrocket as a direct result of high-stakes standardized testing.

Texas students have to pass 15 standardized tests to graduate from high school, the most of any state. Last year’s 9th grade was the first class to take the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, and after three rounds of end-of-course exams, 35% of the Class of 2015 has failed at least one STAAR test and two retakes, according to a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency.

This means that a group of students roughly equal to the population of Abilene is off-track for graduation and has no reason to keep going to school other than prom, football games, and the off chance that they might still learn something in class. No matter what their teachers say or what grades they earn, this 35% cannot graduate solely because of the STAAR test.

The bill that both the Texas House and Senate have passed does not provide any amnesty for the 35% now off-track for graduation and also leaves in place the majority of the exams that tripped them up, meaning Texas is likely to see similar results in future classes. Typically Texas 9th-graders take English I, Algebra I, biology and world geography. Of these, HB 5 only eliminates world geography. Most of the relief in HB 5 eliminates end-of-course exams in the 10th and 11th grades.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the rest of the Class of 2015 aces the rest of the STAAR tests and avoids sex, drugs and all the other pitfalls that can lead to dropping out. Graduating 65% of the Class of 2015 would cause Texas’ graduation rate—currently 86%—to plummet to a new low. Through an intellectually dishonest accounting trick, the TEA boosted the graduation rate by not counting 50,000 students who failed to complete high school. Now twice that many won’t be graduating thanks to the STAAR tests.

A painful aspect of holding 35% “accountable” by guaranteeing they won’t get diplomas is that the legislature isn’t holding schools accountable. Because the STAAR test raised expectations amid historic budget cuts, the legislature suspended school ratings while they iron out the kinks in the new test. No such leniency for students is in the offing, however.

To be sure, critics of over-testing support the bill because it reduces the time wasted on state-mandated exams, practice tests and instruction on test-taking strategies that currently eat up 65 days of the 180-day school year, according to the Houston superintendent. Other criticism of HB 5 comes from the opposite direction with worries that eliminating tests lowers expectations and dumbs down the curriculum. “What gets tested gets taught,” said TEA Commissioner Michael Williams. “What we treasure, we measure.”

But the argument over whether the next generation needs to take Algebra II ignores the poor kids who failed Algebra I. Without high school diplomas, they are more likely to end up unemployed, on welfare, or in prison. The STAAR test was instituted to get more Texas kids ready to tackle college work. Instead, high-stakes testing has guaranteed that more than 100,000 Texans won’t even get out of high school. In our effort to raise a more educated workforce, we have unintentionally expanded the welfare state.

Whether the number of required tests is five or 15, exams are only supposed to measure education, not prevent someone from getting one. It’s long past time to remove the high stakes from standardized testing and use them as the diagnostic tools they’re intended to be. Luckily, there’s still time for the Texas legislature to fix this.